InuYasha: Feudal Combat
Well, the feudal part's there, but about that combat...
Published: October 1, 2005
I have a confession to make: I like InuYasha (the TV show, that is). What started out for my girlfriend and I as something to make fun of (seriously, how it is possible rattle off like 8 different character names in the span of 10 seconds?) as we drifted off to sleep mutated into a bizarre kind of affection, and now that we're lacking Adult Swim every night (stupid bills), actually hitting the hay doesn't really feel the same.
Perhaps that's why I was mildly excited to see that Feudal Combat had finally hit our office. Okay, so technically it was the old office, which is why this review is going up so late, but I will still admit that I was excited. It couldn't replace the show, of course, but it might be fun to goof around in that world again for a bit, and who doesn't like a little button mashing from time to time?
The problem is, the InuYasha name is really just something of a window dressing for an otherwise stunningly mediocre fighting engine. Sure, the RenderWare engine makes the environments pretty in a way, but they're wholly static and the actual combat is so mindless it's not only possible to button mash through every battle to finish the single-player story mode in less than an hour, it's actually recommended.
The comparison to Capcom's Power Stone games has been made before elsewhere, but I'd never voluntarily link the two. Feudal Combat offers almost no environmental interaction, keeps the fights in relatively close quarters on a single plane and really doesn't give a crap about character balance or storylines. For a game based on a TV show that's almost all soap operatic bits between the same basic plot sequence (find a monster, kill it, take bits of the sacred jewel shard), it seems a shame to gloss over the way the characters interact beyond the most basic bits.
Combat is handled simply enough: the Square button unleashes a standard attack, X issues forth a slightly stronger (but slower) one, Circle lets you prep and then hit with a super attack useful for taking out an enemy towards the end, and Triangle allows you to jump. The shoulders handle controlling your AI partner's attack mode (defensive, offensive, balanced or supportive), calling in the occasional tag-team attack and blocks, and that's about it. Each character has three life bars, and they must be whittled down one at a time until they're taken out. This translates to corner traps and timed supers around the 2 ½ bar mark, which usually means an easy victory on the first try.
The game does offer a simple story mode, allowing you to play through the game as InuYasha and Kagome, then Miroku and Sango, then Sesshomaru and finally Shippo. If these names are confusing, congratulations, you just experienced a typical conversation on the show. After a couple of episodes, though, you pick up on the fact that InuYasha's a half-demon, Sesshomaru's his full-demon brother, Kagome is the reincarnation of the priestess that mistakenly bound InuYasha to a tree 50 years before the start of the game and provides a basic love interest, Miroku is a horndog letch monk with the curse of a wind tunnel stuck in his hand, Sango's a boomerang-wielding fighter in search of her brother and Shippo's... well, a little demon that's usually just lame.
The game, however, doesn't really stop to introduce any of the complexities of the characters, instead leaving most conversations as a hackneyed way to say "I'm gonna fight you now" as many times as possible. Multiple playthroughs of the story mode with each new character or characters will net you perhaps 50% of what I explained above.
Perhaps that's why I was mildly excited to see that Feudal Combat had finally hit our office. Okay, so technically it was the old office, which is why this review is going up so late, but I will still admit that I was excited. It couldn't replace the show, of course, but it might be fun to goof around in that world again for a bit, and who doesn't like a little button mashing from time to time?
The problem is, the InuYasha name is really just something of a window dressing for an otherwise stunningly mediocre fighting engine. Sure, the RenderWare engine makes the environments pretty in a way, but they're wholly static and the actual combat is so mindless it's not only possible to button mash through every battle to finish the single-player story mode in less than an hour, it's actually recommended.
The comparison to Capcom's Power Stone games has been made before elsewhere, but I'd never voluntarily link the two. Feudal Combat offers almost no environmental interaction, keeps the fights in relatively close quarters on a single plane and really doesn't give a crap about character balance or storylines. For a game based on a TV show that's almost all soap operatic bits between the same basic plot sequence (find a monster, kill it, take bits of the sacred jewel shard), it seems a shame to gloss over the way the characters interact beyond the most basic bits.
Combat is handled simply enough: the Square button unleashes a standard attack, X issues forth a slightly stronger (but slower) one, Circle lets you prep and then hit with a super attack useful for taking out an enemy towards the end, and Triangle allows you to jump. The shoulders handle controlling your AI partner's attack mode (defensive, offensive, balanced or supportive), calling in the occasional tag-team attack and blocks, and that's about it. Each character has three life bars, and they must be whittled down one at a time until they're taken out. This translates to corner traps and timed supers around the 2 ½ bar mark, which usually means an easy victory on the first try.
The game does offer a simple story mode, allowing you to play through the game as InuYasha and Kagome, then Miroku and Sango, then Sesshomaru and finally Shippo. If these names are confusing, congratulations, you just experienced a typical conversation on the show. After a couple of episodes, though, you pick up on the fact that InuYasha's a half-demon, Sesshomaru's his full-demon brother, Kagome is the reincarnation of the priestess that mistakenly bound InuYasha to a tree 50 years before the start of the game and provides a basic love interest, Miroku is a horndog letch monk with the curse of a wind tunnel stuck in his hand, Sango's a boomerang-wielding fighter in search of her brother and Shippo's... well, a little demon that's usually just lame.
The game, however, doesn't really stop to introduce any of the complexities of the characters, instead leaving most conversations as a hackneyed way to say "I'm gonna fight you now" as many times as possible. Multiple playthroughs of the story mode with each new character or characters will net you perhaps 50% of what I explained above.
